With 2016 drawing to a close – and some may argue with good cause – it is time to assess the landscape throughout the year. According to figures published by managed service providers IT Specialists (ITS), the 10 largest business continuity disasters of the year in the UK include storms, fires, and power outages.

Particularly observant readers of this publication will note a similar study was conducted by ITS

IBM has announced the launch of new services on its Bluemix platform which are focused on continuous delivery, DevOps, and simplifying app development in the cloud.

IBM Bluemix Continuous Delivery gives DevOps teams a central hub to create, manage, and scale toolchains, which are integral to the app development process, as well as providing toolchain templates designed to be provisioned enterprise-wide with minimum fuss. The templates can also be used to help build microservices,...

The portfolio includes approximately 900 customers and are based exclusively in the US and Latin America. Equinix will open three new markets, in Culpeper in Virginia, Houston, and Bogota, and will add almost 2.5 million gross square feet to the company’s overall footprint.

A new report issued today by Flexera Software argues that software asset management (SAM) needs to evolve to keep up with software as a service (SaaS) and virtualisation moving into the mainstream.

The study, which polled almost 500 respondents answering questions on enterprise and application production, found that for 20% of respondents, more than a quarter of their software is SaaS-based, while 39% say more than a quarter is virtualised. Interestingly, while three quarters say 80% or...

Hyperconverged: it’s a word which elicits knowing nods from those in the industry, and looks of panic from those few who haven’t heard of it. Yet hyperconverged infrastructure, bundling in compute, storage, networking and virtualisation in a software-centric architecture, is here to stay, and Massachusetts-based SimpliVity has today announced a deal to put its OmniStack technology on Huawei FusionServer in a new collaboration.

Almost 70% of small businesses in a survey from B2B analyst and reviews firm Clutch say they rely on their cloud storage provider for backups, with only 15% opting for automated services and 12% not bothering at all.

The findings appear as the second of two reports on SMBs and cloud strategy, with the first in November advising that many small firms are risking their...

Cloud storage provider Box has announced its Q317 financial results, with revenue hitting a record $102.8 million (£81.3m), an increase of 31% on the same time last year.

Billings in the third quarter was $112.4m, up 26% from this time last year, while GAAP operating loss was at $37.8m, lower than expected. The company says it is on track to achieve positive free cash flow by the end of Q4, while its guidance has been raised to $397-$398m, up from $394-$396m.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the launch of a new series of instances for its cloud infrastructure, both expanding current instance families and creating new categories.

At Re:Invent in Las Vegas today, Andy Jassy, AWS chief executive, announced XL and 2XL segments for its T2 series of instances, which are aimed more at the simpler workload, as well as I3, the next generation of its high I/O instances, C5 for more compute intensive workloads, and R4 for memory intensive...

Say hello to UpCloud. The Finland-based cloud provider has secured €4 million (£3.4m) in a series A funding round, and is looking to expand its team with the proceeds.

The startup, which was founded in 2011, currently has four data centres in Chicago, Frankfurt, Helsinki, and London, and was recently named by Deloitte as one of the top three fastest growing technology firms in Finland.

UpCloud aims squarely at the ‘cost-effective, high performance’ space, and is naturally...

Managed cloud services provider Rackspace has announced it is to open a data centre in Germany, citing the strict data protection laws in the DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) region as key to the move.

While it is Rackspace’s first foray into continental Europe in this manner, the company will join a host of other players in Frankfurt, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, and IBM. Alibaba announced a similar move

“There’s no escaping the reality that as more connected devices and technology trends sweep the market, more demands will be placed on the data centre to provide the high-powered servers and cooling systems required,” said Greg McCulloch, CEO of Aegis. “But in the pursuit of...

It’s a discussion which has rumbled on for years; does a centralised or decentralised model of IT work best? According to new research commissioned by VMware, cloud computing has become key to the decentralisation of IT – and while it may ease the pressure in some areas, security, management and compliance issues remain.

The latest release, titled State of the Cloud, represents the second half of VMware’s study, with the former, The IT Archipelago, being conducted by the...

Chinese eCommerce giant Alibaba has beefed up its cloud operations with the announcement of four new data centres opening by the end of 2016 in Germany, the Middle East, Australia, and Japan.

The German data centre, located in Frankfurt, will be run in partnership with Vodafone, while Sydney will host the Australian data centre with a dedicated team. Japan’s data centre opening will continue Alibaba’s partnership with SoftBank announced earlier this year, while the launch...

IBM has announced a series of new cloud data services on Bluemix, its developer-friendly platform as a service (PaaS) offering, aiming to help businesses accelerate their migration and glean better insights from their data.

There are three services in total. The snappily-titled IBM Decision Optimisation on Cloud, which is in beta, helps organisations digest a large amount of data, including predictions, business goals and transactional figures, and spit them out as decision...

A new report from Tata Communications offers a warning for service providers; their solutions do not always meet the expectations of enterprises.

The research, which was conducted by IDC among enterprises and service providers across 32 countries, saw enterprises rank security, cited by 52% of respondents, cloud (43%) and mobility (32%) as their primary technology priorities.

But there may be a gap between what enterprises want and what service providers can give. Enterprises see...

Small businesses continue to put security as their main priority when selecting a cloud storage provider, yet many continue to risk their security by choosing free solutions, according to a new survey from analyst firm Clutch.

According to the survey, which polled almost 300 small and medium businesses who use at least one cloud storage platform, 25% of respondents admit they use a free cloud storage product, compared to 71% who said their organisations pay for cloud storage.

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About the author

James is editor of CloudTech, with a passion for how technology influences business and several Mobile World Congress events under his belt. James has interviewed a variety of leading figures in his career, from former Mafia boss Michael Franzese, to Steve Wozniak, and Jean Michel Jarre. James can be found tweeting at @James_T_Bourne.

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